John Irving Quotes

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.

What's the point of trying to fix a world we're so briefly in?

Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just something we haul into the grave.

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

Some old guy once said that the meaning of life is that it ends.

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

Oh, the cares of men! how much emptiness there is in human concerns!

When I was done traveling, I returned convinced of one thing: we're nothing.

We know life is futile. A man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully close to a padded cell.

We're all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It's dogs barking. It doesn't mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive.

One idea I explore in my stand-up show is whether, if you try looking at the universe rationally and avoid coping mechanisms like mysticism or religion, you can still be happy knowing you are going to die after a brief time on this spinning ball.

As much as we'd like to think life is sacred, there's not a lot of evidence for that. The universe is maddeningly casual, giving and taking it.

Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

Life is wasted on the living.

I think a lot about death more than life, because we're going towards death.